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By Jason Bourgeois
It's January, 2012, and that means I am wholly justified in being lazy and phoning in a look back at the previous year column! 2011 was pretty huge, for the big companies, both in the things they did, and the things behind the scenes. But one thing was clear, 2011 was about change. And in these troubled times, comics are even more in dire straits than usual, and spent the year embracing that old saying, change or die.
So without further adieu, here are my top 10 changes in comics for the past year.
- Less crossovers! Or smaller crossovers. This would have been higher on the list, if it actually turned out to be true. It sounded good in theory. Flashpoint! Self contained and five issues long! And then came over a dozen tie-ins a month. Fear Itself promised fewer tie-ins, but I'm pretty sure that failed too. And on top of it, at the same time there was Amazing Spider-Man's Spider-Island storyline. They promised us fewer crossovers, and they started out small, then somewhere along the line things exploded when we weren't looking. An attempt at change that didn't quite materialise.
- Aquaman is cool again. Whoda thunk it?
- Barbara Gordon regains the use of her legs. Possibly the most controversial aspect of DC's massive reboot in September, at least before the actual comics came out. Afterwards, the biggest controversy seems to be the oversexualisation of some of their characters, but I digress. By now, Babs has carved out quite a role for herself as Oracle, spending almost as much of her existence as a character in a wheelchair, as out of one. But now, she's back in her Batgirl outfit, hopping from the spires of Gotham. I am still not convinced this was a necessary, and feels more of a step backwards than forwards. But hey, regression can be seen as change too!
- The light being defined by the darkness once more. About 20 years ago, DC split off their more darker, supernatural books into the Vertigo imprint. Giving Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, and Sandman new homes in their own little world, and almost never would they intermingle with the DCU proper. There have been exceptions since then, but they have truly been few and far between. It was always an odd relationship having DCU characters alongside books like Fables, and with the reboot, they got brought back home, or at least mostly. Constantine still hangs out in both universes, but otherwise, the darkness has returned to the DC Universe. This is a big sign of how far the market and reader expectations and desires have come since the original Vertigo split. Having superhero comics with rotting corpses being animated and running around, and dealing with other more mature themes, are more acceptable and expected in today's world, so the more mature line of Vertigo DCU characters is less necessary, and it feels good to have these guys interacting with Superman and Batman again. It makes for a more fleshed out universe with so many different facets to it.
- Ultimate Spider-Man bites the dust. Hey, it made the national news cycle, and it admittedly IS huge. Sure, it was ULTIMATE Spider-Man that died, and that lessens the impact since it isn't THE Spidey, but at the same time, that just goes to show the things you CAN get away with in the Ultimate universe, opportunities they rarely take advantage of. But the death of Ultimate Spidey is one of those rare changes that really shone a light on that corner of Marvel, and then replaced him with a new guy carrying the torch, a mixed race kid with different powers carrying on in Pete's name. In some ways, that seems to be how Peter would have been created. The typical high school kid isn't the normal white guy with nerd glasses. It makes this Spidey more relatable, and more relevant. While I don't read the Ultimate line myself, it is nice to see them taking these risks, and making themselves different from the mainstream.
- Ron Marz and Stejpan Sejic wrapped up their lengthy run on Witchblade this year. Marz's run is more lengthy, but even a 40+ run of issues by an artist is something to gawk at. And Sejic gets bonus points for doing other comics at the same time, with very few fill-ins. While the change over to the new creative team doesn't start until the middle of January, it is still worth noting a very strong, very well done run that stretches over 70 issues by a single writer that redefined Sara Pezinni, what the Witchblade is, and made a cohesive universe out of Top Cow's comics. And, I needed some shout out to the smaller publishers on this list.
- Outside of comics, one of the biggest changes was Marvel and DC pushing both of their lines closer and closer to day and date digital releases. This is huge, in an oddly almost imperceptible way. Many still get our comics in stores, so it's easy to not notice something of this magnitude. But the music industry's move to digital distribution has been a sea change for them, and much the same could be on the horizon for comics. It will make comics more widely available and easy to get, for those with devices capable of acquiring them, which is more and more people every day. What this will mean for the physical distribution methods remains to be seen, and this is easily THE story to watch in 2012 and beyond.
- I put this one out there as Marvel's recent cancellation wave. With a rocky industry becoming even rockier, layoffs having to take place in the shoddy economy, and fewer editors and employees to work on books, as well as having to take a hard look at their bottom line, Marvel closed out 2011 with a wave of cancellations through many of their lower selling books. This isn't that abnormal, and Marvel often cancels those low sellers, as they should. But many of the books cancelled were selling better than many other books cancelled in years past, as well as the sheer number of them announced at once is nigh unprecedented, save for the DC Implosion from 30 or so years ago. Wolverine had expanded to an entire family of titles, now reduced to just his solo book, and his team of X-Men, and many other titles like Herc and Black Panther finally fall away after years of publication. In some ways, this leaves Marvel to seem more focused, but in other ways, it makes those remaining low selling titles look very tenuous to any kind of continued existence.
- Uncanny X-Men is one of the last remaining longest running comics being published. Or it was until the Schism hit and restarted with #1. And while that in and of itself is huge, the entire restructuring of the X-Men line is just as big. The X-Books have not been this focused in, what? 10 years? More? I'd daresay since Claremont left the titles, but there have been a few bright spots since then, although having such a clear through line has been lacking for most of those intervening years. This is a veritable renaissance for the X-Men, an old franchise that really needed the shot in the arm they got by having everything from the past five years at last come to a head, and truly change things. And when it comes to change, you have to bring the mutants into it, don't you?
- And the #1 change in comics this year has got to be, without doubt, DC's reboot as a whole. Why? Well, duh. That's pretty damned obvious. It gave me enough to write about for most of the past six months, and will probably give me a few more columns in 2012. Some of the more minor elements even made this list.
That wraps up my look back at the year in change, and I am going back to bed.
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